A bone to pick: Missing link is evolutionists' weakest

Houston Chronical via WorldNetDaily ^ | July 26 | Jeff Farmer

[Tribune7]

Printer-friendly format July 26, 2002, 6:11PM

A bone to pick: Missing link is evolutionists' weakest By JEFF FARMER

It has been said that if anyone wants to see something badly enough, they can see anything, in anything. Such was the case recently, but unlike some ghostly visage of the Madonna in a coffee stain, this was a vision of our ancestral past in the form of one recently discovered prehistoric skull, dubbed Sahelanthropus tchadensis.

Papers across the globe heralded the news with great fanfare. With words like "scientists hailed" and "startling find" sprinkled into the news coverage, who couldn't help but think evolutionists had finally found their holy grail of missing links?

For those of us with more than a passing interest in such topics as, "Where did we come from? And how did we get here?," this recent discovery and its subsequent coverage fall far short of its lofty claims. A healthy criticism is in order.

Practically before the fossil's discoverer, the French paleoanthropologist Michel Brunet, could come out of the heat of a Chadian desert, a number of his evolutionary colleagues had questioned his conclusions.

In spite of the obvious national pride, Brigitte Senut of the Natural History of Paris sees Brunet's skull as probably that of an ancient female gorilla and not the head of man's earliest ancestor. While looking at the same evidence, such as the skull's flattened face and shorter canine teeth, she draws a completely different conclusion.

Of course, one might be inclined to ask why such critiques never seem to get the same front-page coverage? It's also important to point out that throughout history, various species, such as cats, have had varying lengths of canine teeth. That does not make them any closer to evolving into another species.

A Washington Post article goes on to describe this latest fossil as having human-like traits, such as tooth enamel thicker than a chimpanzee's. This apparently indicates that it did not dine exclusively on the fruit diet common to apes. But apes don't dine exclusively on fruit; rather, their diet is supplemented with insects, birds, lizards and even the flesh of monkeys. The article attempted to further link this fossil to humans by stating that it probably walked upright. Never mind the fact that no bones were found below the head! For all we know, it could have had the body of a centaur, but that would hardly stop an overzealous scientist (or reporter) from trying to add a little meat to these skimpy bones. Could it not simply be a primate similar to today's Bonobo? For those not keeping track of their primates, Bonobos (sp. Pan paniscus) are chimpanzee-like creatures found only in the rain forests of Zaire. Their frame is slighter than that of a chimpanzee's and their face does not protrude as much. They also walked upright about 5 percent of the time. Sound familiar?

Whether it is tooth enamel, length of canines or the ability to walk upright, none of these factors makes this recent discovery any more our ancestral candidate than it does a modern-day Bonobo.

So why does every new fossil discovery seem to get crammed into some evolutionary scenario? Isn't it possible to simply find new, yet extinct, species? The answer, of course, is yes; but there is great pressure to prove evolution.

That leads us to perhaps the most troubling and perplexing aspect of this latest evolutionary hoopla. While on one hand sighting the evolutionary importance of this latest discovery, a preponderance of these articles leave the notion that somehow missing links are not all that important any more.

According to Harvard anthropologist Dan Lieberman, missing links are pretty much myths. That might be a convenient conclusion for those who have been unable to prove evolution via the fossil record. Unfortunately for them, links are absolutely essential to evolution. It is impossible for anything to evolve into another without a linear progression of these such links.

The prevailing evolutionary view of minute changes, over millions of years, is wholly inadequate for the explanation of such a critical piece of basic locomotion as the ball-and-socket joint. Until such questions can be resolved, superficial similarities between various species are not going to prove anything. No matter how bad someone wants to see it.

Farmer is a professional artist living in Houston. He can can be contacted via his Web site, www.theglobalzoo.com

[PatrickHenry]

In 760, hasn't g3k just "proved" that micro-evolution (which he accepts) is impossible?

[gore3000]

You've been around on these threads for months now at least. I wonder how you can not miss that there's no position of g3k's that hasn't been rebutted over and over and over and over.

Gee Vade, how can that be when all my posts are ignored? Name one single post I have made on this thread that has been refuted? Just one. Kindly link to it or give the post numbers.

[VadeRetro]

In 760, hasn't g3k just "proved" that micro-evolution (which he accepts) is impossible?

He claims to accept microevolution, but not any particular evidence for it. OK, maybe the famous light-and-dark English moths.

He claims to believe the earth is old, but IIRC has never despite many urgings cited what evidence for same he accepts. (He's attacked radiometric dating, the geologic column, paleontology, fossils consisting only of bone, and the Big Bang.)

Have fun! I'm out for the rest of the night.

[gore3000]

Gore is basically using the Haldane's Dilemma argument, that there's not enough time to accumulate mutations before they die out.

Nope. My argument is much deeper than that. Favorable mutations do not occur, period. There is not a single example of a mutation which adds complexity to an organism, not one. This is what is needed for evolution. This is what needs to have happened billions of times for evolution to be true and evolutionists cannot find a single example of a mutation that created greater complexity. The mutations that have been seen are either totally detrimental to the organism or change a gene to act less specifically (and less efficiently) than previously.

[gore3000]

Look at humans. We've lost the ability to manufacture our own vitamin C. I don't know what we gained instead but I presume it was worth it at the time.

Sound like natural deselection don't ya think?

True, but remember the nylon-eating bacteria? That specific mutation arises often by a specific mechanism and it died often. It was only beneficial the one time it occurred in a polymer plant waste pond.

Which means that a large proportion of the population got the mutation and that is why it survived. The mechanism apparently has not been found but we do know that chemical reactions do cause mutations. Note also that the mutation was detrimental to the species. It completely destroyed the ability of those having it to process their regular diet - carbohydrates. So when the nylon source ends, the bacteria will die, not what one would call a great evolutionary step.

Beneficial mutations, by definition, have a survival, and hence breeding, advantage.

Problem is that no one can find such mutations! There is also another problem even if such a mutation occurred, as I have shown, it would have to more than double the survival value of the species in order for it to become fixed. Few mutations can be said to do that and could not be the source of gradual evolution. Remember, small steps, small steps do not provide a great advantage, in fact, they provide no advantage or even a disadvantage until the reach fruition.

Mutations of genes are common. Standard estimates are 1-2 mutations per thousand individuals per gene.

Nonsense. The estimates are much, much lower. Such a rate would quickly result in great changes in any species and we do not see that. It would also result in a lot deaths and the quick inability of different individuals to mate with each other. This is not the case.

So, we have an observation in humans of a gene duplication that has mutated into a gene containing a beneficial trait? -tribune7-

Not in humans.

So why do you folk insult me for telling the truth????????????????????

[gore3000]

The problem is that they have to be immediately beneficial -tribune7-

I agree that beneficial means beneficial.

But you keep evading the point that if they are not immediately beneficial they will be lost due to the 50% chance of survival at each procreation.

Don't you have any family? Any aunts, uncles, cousins, children? Can't you see specific characteristics survive from one generation to another?

How many times do I have to post how a new mutation dissappears as I have done in post#683 and 749 before you evolutionists will address it? How many posts before you evolutionists stop ignoring it?

The gene is the new function (protein) and it is either beneficial, neutral, or detrimental. No additional regulatory mechanism is necessary at this point.

You really blew it on that one! Let me show you what you need to make one protein Here's the first step:

machinery to start the process

Here's the next step:



Here's the details of how it happens from those rabid right wing creationists at UC Berkeley:

Berkeley scientists have obtained the first good picture of a major chunk of the machinery that turns genes on and off.

With the help of electron microscopy and a relatively new technique called single particle image analysis, the researchers reconstructed a three-dimensional picture of the heart of the machine -- the part that binds to DNA and starts the process of gene transcription.

The picture shows for the first time how the proteins are arranged, and gives clues to the inner workings of the machinery that transcribes genes -- the complex of proteins that latches onto and copies DNA into an RNA blueprint for building proteins.

...

The entire machine that transcribes a gene is composed of perhaps 50 proteins, including RNA polymerase, the enzyme that converts DNA code into RNA code. A crew of transcription factors grabs hold of the DNA just above the gene at a site called the core promoter, while associated activators bind to enhancer regions farther upstream of the gene to rev up transcription.

Working as a tightly knit machine, these proteins transcribe a single gene into messenger RNA. The messenger RNA wends its way out of the nucleus to the factories that produce proteins, where it serves as a blueprint for production of a specific protein.
From: UC Berkeley - First Pictures of Transcription Machine

No one has postulated that duplicate genes are the "engines of evolution" - just one "engine" of many. And not similar function - exactly the same function. Until a mutation occurs in one of the duplicated genes.

The only other alternative is the creation of a completely new gene by random chance. Aside from the problem of getting it to do something as I have shown above, there is the little problem of the almost infinite amount of tries needed to make a new gene. A fairly small gene is some 300 DNA codons long and each codon can contain one of 20 amino acids. The chances of this occurring are 20^300 or one chance divided by a 1 with 120 zeros behind it. It could have happened once or twice in 4 billion years, but not the hundreds of thousands of times necessary for evolution to have produced the millions of different species living today.

Haven't we seen totally new genes come into being in just this way? Yes, we have. Go look at the nylon eating bacteria again for a documented example.

Jeez, you did not even bother to read the article! It clearly states that it was a mutation on an existing gene which took away the ability of the bacteria to eat carbohydrates!

Maybe if you really look at what is going on in science instead of reading the nonsense spewed by Gould, Dawkins and TalkOrigins, you would see that my position is correct.

[gore3000]

Where, outside of a petri dish, do you see a population grow from 1,000 to 10,000,000 in 5 generations?

You keep arguing that the more a species reproduces, the more chances of the mutation remaining and spreading through the species. I showed that either with a small amount of reproduction or a large one the mutation will tend to dissappear. It certainly will never take over an entire species. And certainly it makes gradual evolution, mutation by mutation adding up to large changes utterly impossible.

[gore3000]

Generation 5: 625 mutants and 9999375 non-mutants -me-

There is no death in your model.

Of course there is. The 625 mutants and the 999375 non-mutants are the progeny of the 5th generation, not those who procreated. You are just creating confusionism. You wanted lots of children, you got them. Another way to look at the problem is what are the chances of a true coin toss coming up heads 5 times in a row? Using binaries it is quite easy one chance in 1024 tosses.

Here's the problem again, any way you slice it, only half the gene's of each parents get passed to each progeny. So a new gene only has half a chance of being passed on each time (because there are no other genes like it in the whole population). Genes get 'fixed' in a population when a large amount of the individuals acquire the trait. Then some individuals will get the genes from both parents, and in 1/4 of the cases will have both alleles the same, in 1/2 half the cases will get one of the two with the gene, and in a 1/4 will not get it at all. Until there are enough individuals with the new gene this cannot happen and it will not become fixed.

Now the odds could be improved if all individuals married their brothers and sisters, but here's another rub with all this. If you have a small inter-mating population, other mutations, recessive bad mutations will also occur and the species will be destroyed due to the other bad mutations brought forth by this inbreeding.

[gore3000]

In 760, hasn't g3k just "proved" that micro-evolution (which he accepts) is impossible?

I do not accept micro-evolution, it is a misnomer used by evolutionists. What does occur is adaptation. Species have a wide range of alleles which enable them to adapt to the environment when necessary. We see this in the fact that without mutations we can breed plants that are more productive, dogs and horses with qualities we like. This breeding is just using the genetic pool whcih already exists in the species, and selecting the qualities desired by the breeder. Why are all humans a little bit different from each other? Because of the very large variety in the gene pool. No mutations necessary. (also see Post# 757 ).

[Tribune7]

This is actually becoming a pretty good debate, now.

I see Vade's point. You get your 600 mutants in a population of 10 million. By some fluke, 40 or so of these mutants get isolated with 40 or so non-mutants. You might have an entirely new genus. I suspect it's the reason why there are tigers and ocelots.

On the other hand, since we are basing our example on GK3's illustration, it looks like we can conclude his argument is an honest one.

[f.Christian]

Running a evo teeny taliban on the FR?

Evo turbans and burqas---jihads!

One size fits all!

Evo mecca---the cave--zoo!

[Tribune7]

Something else, our sceanario implies a neutral or benefical mutation. How common are they?

[Junior]

LBB seems to think the offspring of the beneficially mutated organisms have the same chance of survival as those not gifted -- hence his multiplicative progression. If, however, the mutation is beneficial to survival, it will eventually outbreed its non-enhanced brethren.

10 offspring: 5 mutated, 5 not. Four enhanced and two non-enhanced survive (okay, this may be an exaggeraion, but the principle's still the same). In the second generation we have 40 enhanced and 20 non-enhanced. Again, 32 enhanced survive, while only 8 non-enhanced survive.

And so on, ad infinitum. I often wonder if LBB (and creos in general) actually work through their arguments before posting them.

[Junior]

Or, if only half the offspring of the breeders with the mutation have the mutation we have the following:

Generation 1 (10 individuals): 5 mutants, 5 non-mutants. Again 4 of the former and 2 of the latter survive.

Generation 2 (60 individuals): 16 mutants, 15 non-mutants.

And so on.

[PatrickHenry]

I often wonder if LBB (and creos in general) actually work through their arguments before posting them.

The capacity to think that many steps ahead would pretty much assure sufficient rational faculties that the creo would very quickly become an evo. So your answer is "no," because by definition those who remain creos just don't operate at that level.

[general_re]

Right. That must be it - we're all out to get you. It couldn't possibly be because you're a running joke - it's everyone oppressing you. Whatever.

Hope you didn't miss it - the Laughton/Gable version of "Mutiny on the Bounty" was on Turner Classic Movies last night...

[gore3000]

LBB seems to think the offspring of the beneficially mutated organisms have the same chance of survival as those not gifted -- hence his multiplicative progression. If, however, the mutation is beneficial to survival, it will eventually outbreed its non-enhanced brethren.

10 offspring: 5 mutated, 5 not. Four enhanced and two non-enhanced survive (okay, this may be an exaggeraion, but the principle's still the same). In the second generation we have 40 enhanced and 20 non-enhanced. Again, 32 enhanced survive, while only 8 non-enhanced survive.

You folk keep talking about beneficial mutations as if they are fact, yet you cannot give examples of actual verified beneficial mutations.

In Post# 766 just above I show very clearly what a complex support system is required to make one single protein. Without such a support system a new gene will do absolutely nothing.

A duplicated gene will do nothing and add no survival advantage until it is transformed after many mutations. Until then it will remain at a 50% chance of dissappearing each generation. A completely new gene being created (and I do not see evolutionists daring to give even a plausible process for this happening) would take even more time before it becomes in any way beneficial. The only other option is the alteration of an existing gene. In every case this leads to less specificity of purpose which leads to decreased functioning in normal circumstances (such as with the nylon bacteria). While this does occur and has been observed experimentally, it does not add anything at all to the genome. Therefore it cannot be the source of transforming a species from a bacteria to a human being. In addition, it decreases the overall survivability of the species.

What you and your fellow evolutionists are saying is just wishful thinking not based on any factual evidence. Science is about what is, not about what could be, might be, or perhaps might have been.

[gore3000]

I see Vade's point. You get your 600 mutants in a population of 10 million. By some fluke, 40 or so of these mutants get isolated with 40 or so non-mutants. You might have an entirely new genus.

In such a situation the mutated gene could become fixed within the small population. However, there are still insurmountable problems. For one, the number of individuals which could provide additional favorable mutations to make the genes a truly beneficial advance would be very small. This means it would take a really long time for beneficial advances to occur. In this meantime the severe inbreeding of the group would destroy it due to harmful mutations which occur quite more frequently than beneficial or neutral ones.

[Tribune7]

In this meantime the severe inbreeding of the group would destroy it due to harmful mutations which occur quite more frequently than beneficial or neutral ones.

Good point.

[balrog666]

Let's see you back up your statement with real evidence.

BWAAAAAAHAHAHA. You mean like you do? BWAAAAAAAAHAHA!